Thu, 07/15/2021
This post is a summary of Episode 28 of The Nebraska Governance & Technology Center’s (NGTC) Podcast Series, Tech Refactored. In this episode, host Gus Hurwitz, Director of the NGTC, was joined by Mike Tobias, Senior Producer at Nebraska Public Media and host of the What If… video series.
In this episode of Tech Refactored Gus sat down with Mike Tobias, Senior Producer at Nebraska Public Media and host of the “What If…” video series, to talk about the series, its approach to telling stories about innovation and innovators, and how he has seen the media landscape change over the course of his more than 20 years at Nebraska Public Media (formerly NET). At its core, “What if…” is “an exploration of innovation, creativity, invention, and discovery, telling stories about interesting Nebraskans with interesting ideas in a wide range of areas.” For Tobias, innovation takes a variety of forms, “it’s science, it’s entrepreneurship, it’s education, the arts, economic development. It’s interesting people taking interesting approaches to a wide range of things,” all with a focus on Nebraska.
And with regard to innovation in Nebraska, Tobias has found no shortage of stories, from a young entrepreneur who is creating “fitbits for cattle,” to an experimental computer music composer in Omaha, to a farmer producing shrimp in Southeast Nebraska. “The stories are endless,” Tobias says. In his experience, an innovator is a different sort of person. Tobias gave the example of a couple young farmers that were initially going to play football at a smaller college before they ended up connecting with the ag entrepreneurship program at UNL on a tour and realized that's what they wanted to be doing. So they returned to the family farm, and rather than farming the way it had always been done, they decided that, in addition to growing corn, they would start a whiskey distillery before expanding to growing hops in partnership with a local group. Finally they started an operation selling meat directly to the consumer - and they did this all in their early 20s.
Asked about the difference between being an innovator in Nebraska as compared to a traditional innovation center like Silicon Valley or New York, Tobias noted that, for a long time, Nebraska innovators were constrained by a lack of access to capital. But all that has changed in the last decade or so as new venture capital opportunities have emerged alongside startup collaboratives.
One area in which innovators in Nebraska have been particularly active is agriculture. Tobias notes that there has been a lot of pressure within the agriculture industry for quite some time to diversify. But beyond agriculture, Nebraska presents other unique opportunities for innovation; Tobias cites the example of research into severe weather systems; for example, the largest drone-based research project into storms was managed out of UNL.
Some innovators are also moved by the circumstances in which they find themselves and their communities. One man named Maya, who grew up in South Omaha and had a rough life growing up, worked in business for a time before he “decided he wanted to give something back to kids who had similar challenges as him. So he starts this bike shop and coffee shop by Omaha Central High School.” The focus of that program was to “provide opportunities to kids who are transitioning out of foster care by providing them with jobs and life coaching and all sorts of opportunities.”
In putting together “What If…” Tobias has been an innovator himself, experimenting with different ways of telling stories and different production techniques. For Tobias, one of the secrets to the success of his innovation has been having a good, creative group of people around him and giving them the space to try new things. Inevitably, some of the ideas won’t succeed, but others will, and in the process the team becomes increasingly familiar with what works and what doesn’t, and identifies even more potential avenues for creative exploration. And in terms of finding great stories, Tobias relies on a network of contacts that he has built up over time and the instinct for a great story that he has honed over his 20+ years of working as a producer at NET/Nebraska Public Media.
One element that has really set “What If…” apart in terms of its storytelling style is the active role that Tobias and the rest of the production team plays on camera. Tobias is an active participant in the stories, not just asking questions, but also getting his hands dirty making gelato, or riding around a mixed-use housing project on a scooter, pointing things from his ride and highlighting the culture of the place as well as its commitment not only to providing residents with housing but also educational opportunities.
What does the future hold for “What If…”? Tobias has some great ideas on the horizon, from a woman who has built a kitchen, a canoe, and now, bee hotels, out of mycelium mushroom material. And in terms of keeping the storytelling relevant, Tobias believes a key is to provide content on a number of platforms, as the diversity of platforms on which consumers access content continues to grow. Listening to Mike, one gets the distinct impression that video storytelling is in a constant state of innovative flux, in terms of content, production, and distribution - and “What If…” seems well equipped to continue to surf that wave in the years to come.
Tags: Tech Refactored Review
